


You Can Choose Your Friends But You Can't Choose Your Family

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Series 12 Vignettes [9]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:02:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26663371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: On Gallifrey, faced with her oldest friend's betrayal and the truth of who she is, the Doctor reflects on found family.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair, Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: Series 12 Vignettes [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1731406
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

As the Doctor lays on the floor of the Citadel, every fibre of her being aching with a deep-rooted agony that seems to linger on and on as her memories swell and jostle and threaten to spill out of the confines of her mind, she silently offers a prayer of thanks to the version of herself – past, present, it doesn’t much matter anymore – who had given her the idea to overload the Matrix and free herself from the confines of the holding cell that the Master had insisted on trapping her in.

The cell had been an unpleasant, unnecessary touch that was entirely in keeping with his ambitions and stated goals; she would willingly have stayed and listened to him, even amongst the remains of their people and their planet, without the encumbrance of his bonds holding her in place, but he’d not wanted to risk it. Despite it all, it had been _he_ who hadn’t trusted _her;_ she had been so foolishly naïve as to think he’d changed, in the same manner she had always been wont to do, and yet he had not seen fit to take her at her word and leave her unbound and unencumbered by the exhausting pressure of a holding cell.

Mistrust has always been, she thinks, at the heart of the story of their lives. He, the dangerous megalomaniac with trust issues; she, the saviour of worlds, with blind faith in her oldest friend, even after all he has shown himself to be capable of. Still, she never gives up hope. Still, she never wants to deem him irredeemable or beyond saving. She wants to think the best of all people, and she extends that sobriquet to him, much as he’d dislike it; he considers himself far too superior to be lumped in with ‘people,’ as though he were one of her fam or one of the humans she so enjoys spending time with. Still, she supposes, he _is_ one of her friends, and she wants to think the best of him, even as her body continues screaming at her and her mind lets out a loud, internal whimper of complaint at the agony of what they’ve been dragged through, the unconsciousness afflicting her physical form merely a defence mechanism as she tries to heal herself to some degree against the damage inflicted upon her by the truth and the Master’s words.

She isn’t physically _hurt_ , per se. She’s sore – collapsing to the floor had been uncomfortable, and she’d landed awkwardly – but nothing more than that. She can feel a smarting pain along her side where she’d hit the raised dais, and her head is pounding, but that’s more from what she’s seen and heard and experienced than anything physical. No; the majority of her pain is metaphorical and in her mind, in what she now knows about herself and her people and her past. Her entire history has been blown apart, and the confusion and uncertainty jostling in her mind’s eye make even the darkness of her closed eyelids seem to throb and twist painfully.

She’d never trusted or liked her own race, aside from a select handful of acquaintances and associates she had deemed acceptable and chosen to travel with, tag along with, or conduct science experiments with during their youths. There had been the Master, the Rani, Romana, and the Corsair, a little band of five who’d stuck together as they’d moved through the Academy. Collectively they’d disregarded and disavowed all that their people stood for, eschewing pomp and circumstance in favour of tinkering with stolen TARDISes, visiting Shobogan settlements, and conducting mad, bad and dangerous experiments with various chemicals and superconductors, the most memorable of which had burnt off all her hair and eyebrows, and left her unable to hear for a week. She feels a soft surge of fondness at the recollection, and then a wave of confusion and hurt as she wonders how many childhoods and adolescences she’s had; how many people she’s run with; how many friends have fallen by the wayside, either dead or erased from her mind.

She’d seem the Time Lords, throughout her childhood and adolescence, as figures of hypocrisy and hatred; arrogant, self-important people who considered themselves the de facto rulers of the universe by virtue of their intelligence and intellectuality. They thought of themselves as gods, travelling through time and space and picking fights with those whose technology or abilities they sought to assimilate, claiming the moral high ground and seeking to justify themselves with lies or slander.

The thought that she is, she supposes, part of their scientific pillaging, is an unwelcome one, and she physically flinches away from it instinctively, then mentally winces in pain as doing so draws complaints from her sore limbs.

She had loathed the stuffiness of it all; the ridiculousness of the robes and the ceremonial headpieces; the rules and restrictions placed on time travel, something that ought to be fun, and thus robbed it of all joy or excitement. She had despised the curbs on her freedom; hated the dryness of lessons on etiquette and Gallifreyan history – all heavily skewed towards the positive; all lies, she now knows – and tradition. In time travel, the Time Lords had taken something that had been, in the Doctor’s eyes, exciting and dressed it up with so many constraints and limits that it had become boringly mundane; something to be undertaken only for the benefit of their race, and never to be done without rigorous planning and preparation. It had been reduced to nothing more than science, without the degree of magic and wonder she’d always felt it deserved.

With a finite attention span and a seemingly infinite ability to find trouble, the Doctor had never fitted in well in such a society. That was how she’d drifted towards the Master; the two of them uniquely – or so they’d thought – bored by the Academy and the mundanity of its teachings, and so they’d found themselves bosom buddies by default, rebelling against their own people in as many ways as possible. Once they’d found the other three members of their little band of renegades – all of whom were older and thus imbued with a sense of glamour and wisdom due to their additional decade or so of life experience – then there had been, at least, some comfort to be found in her school days.

The Doctor had never understood why she hadn’t fitted in; why she’d been so thoroughly bored and disengaged with what her classmates so enthusiastically and easily took absorbed. They didn’t struggle to focus; they didn’t roll their eyes at each nugget of information they were expected to memorise. They didn’t fidget, or grow bored, or struggle. They simply took to the Academy’s teachings like ducks to water, and the Doctor had equal parts loathed, envied and feared them; for when they reached adulthood, they would be the ones who would surely seek to punish her for a youth misspent. She’d thought that they would be the ones who would be her overlords; off to travel the stars while she remained behind. How wrong she’d been.

Now, she understands her differences. Understands why she’d always felt as though she were skirting the edge of a crowd; why she’d never had the same singular aptitude for being a Time Lord that her peers had. She’d never been like them; never been even remotely similar to them; and she doesn’t have a word for what she is, other than ‘different.’ Is that bad, she wonders? Is it bad not to know who she is? She knows a lingering, niggling part of her is desperate to know, while another fears the truth of the matter; afraid what she might find if she goes seeking her past and her origins. If she even could; she’d fallen through a rift, or so the Master had shown her. Fallen through a tear from another universe, and landed in the clutches of a woman who had, at first, loved her like a mother, until her usefulness had been exposed and she had been reduced to nothing more than a lab rat.

She has no recollections left of Tecteun; they had long been stripped away from her. Just some of the many, many memories that her people had robbed her of; some of the many, many years of her life they had stolen from her without a second thought, keen instead to exploit her and develop her into… what? A weapon? A spy? She doesn’t know, and not knowing pains her. What had their intentions been? To use her to kill? To harm? She’s subverted those hopes every step of the way, or at least that she consciously remembers; the thought that in past or future lives she might kill in the name of the Doctor makes her feel nauseous.

She couldn’t recall her life with Tecteun, and yet she’d watched the memories in the Matrix with the Master by her side; watched as she’d been experimented on and forced, time and time again, to regenerate. That couldn’t have been natural, and she feels a pang of agonised horror as she wonders how her so-called mother had forced her to do so; wondered whether it had hurt. A knife in the ribs? A throat slit from side to side? A capsule of poison in her water? A pillow over the face as she’d slept? Awful things; dark, twisted things that no-one claiming to be in possession of maternal instinct ought to do, and in the name of what? Of progress? Of science? Was one child’s right to life less important than elevating herself to the status of a god, in Tecteun’s eyes?

The Doctor feels her hearts stutter heavily in her chest, the magnitude of the woman’s crimes sitting so heavily upon her that it feels like a physical weight. That isn’t what families are for. That isn’t what families do. She’s seen enough of her companions start lives and families of their own to know that that isn’t how they function; that isn’t how they’re supposed to be. She’d seen Jackie with Rose; Francine with Martha; Sylvia with Donna. She’d watched Amy and Rory fuss over River, their daughter who was older than they were, and yet who was entirely willing to be babied and cared for in a manner that had been entirely alien to the Doctor. She’d seen Clara with the Maitland children, trying desperately to show them the maternal love they were missing, while simultaneously shrinking away from trying to fill the raw, gaping hole in their lives where their mother ought to be; she’d seen Bill, yearning for a mother she’d never known.

Families care. Families show love. Families are compassionate.

Families don’t hurt each other. Families don’t betray each other. Families don’t use each other.

She wants to curl up then, like a child; wants to assume a foetal position, as she had so often in the barn as a youngster, crying silently in the darkness so that the other boys couldn’t hear her; wouldn’t mock her for showing weakness. She wants to weep for the atrocities committed on her; wants to rage and cry and beat her fists on the ground and demand answers. But she cannot. The pain is still overwhelming, and even if she could move, there are no Time Lords left to answer her questions. The only other person vaguely like her in the universe is the man who has told her the truth, and she is both grateful to and fearful of him now, afraid of what he might do next. He’d spent so long wanting her to be special, and now the news that she _is_ appears to have finally tipped him over the edge. She feels a surge of guilt, even though it’s not her fault; is gripped by the bizarre, laughable urge to apologise to him.

“Doctor?”

The voices in the distance are faint, and she thinks for a moment that she might have imagined them. Wishful thinking, perhaps; the pained yearning of a woman for whom all hope is lost. But the shouts come again, louder this time, and she knows she isn’t mistaken.

“Doctor!”

Yaz’s voice is fraught with concern, and the Doctor becomes aware of a Yaz-shaped presence by her side, reaching for her hand with desperate, shaking fingers, lifting it up with care and pressing cool fingertips against her pulse point.

“Yaz, is she alright?” Graham asks, his voice thick with worry, and Yaz shifts the Doctor’s hand in her own, giving it a reassuring, encouraging squeeze.

“Doctor?” Ryan adds, and there’s something so raw and afraid in the relief in his tone that the Doctor feels her hearts stutter. “We’re here for you.”

The words are invigorating; empowering; healing. Her so-called mother might have betrayed her; her people might have used and abused her; her best enemy might have tried to kill her, but these are her friends. These people care about her; they want, desperately, for her to be alright.

Her eyes flutter open a crack and she takes in the sight of them with a rush of affection and warmth; Yaz by her side, still holding her hand; Graham behind her; Ryan stood behind Yaz, leaning over her worriedly.

Her mouth twitches into an exhausted smile.

“My fam,” she breathes. It’s all she can manage, but the two words are enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Yaz watches the best person she's ever met prepare to die, she's reminded of what she's found... and what she's about to lose.

“I have to use the Death Particle on Gallifrey. On my home. On the Master and his new breed of Cybermen.”

The Doctor’s words seem to ring around the oppressively stark console room for a moment, hanging in the air as the assembled humans process what exactly she’s implying. There’s a brief, uncomfortable moment as they all tangibly put two and two together, and then a terse silence as they look down at the floor or stare concertedly into space, none of them wanting to break the silence, and Yaz feels a mounting sense of dread.

“You sure you wanna do that?” Ryan asks at last, and Yaz bites down on her lip as she looks over at him with gratitude, clenching her hands into fists at her side as she fights to uphold her composure, desperate not to show the others her fear. The Doctor can’t, surely? She wouldn’t; she couldn’t. She wouldn’t leave them like that; wouldn’t risk everything they have.

“I’m sure I don’t want to do that, but there’s no alternative,” the Doctor says, her tone abnormally flat. She sounds so measured and calm as she states the bald facts, as though she’s discussing nothing more pressing than tomorrow’s weather forecast, that it’s almost laughable. She’s talking about her death with such pragmatic acceptance, and yet… Yaz recognises that; knows that resignation, has seen it first-hand. She wants to shout at the Doctor; wants to scream and rage and demand that she comes up with another solution, because this one is entirely unsatisfactory. More than that, it’s incomprehensible; the thought of a universe devoid of the Doctor is just… wrong. She can’t find a more eloquent word for it than that; she knows, simply, in her heart that a universe in which the Doctor is no longer bouncing around in her TARDIS saving planets is not a universe that she wants to inhabit.

“If the Master and the Cybermen get off this planet, they'll be unstoppable. I started this with Shelley and the Cyberium, now I have to finish it,” the Doctor continues, then looks around at them all and says carefully, as though daring them to argue with her: “Alone.”

Yaz knows this feeling; knows what the Doctor is imploring them to let her do. She knows that face; she knows that voice; she knows that set of the jaw as the Doctor lifts her chin and stares them all down. The Doctor is trying to look death in the face in the same manner that she had once done herself; is trying to steel herself to walk towards death and greet it as an old friend, rather than fight and rail against it as an enemy. Trying to convince herself that it’s the right thing to do; trying to ignore the plaintive cries and begging of those who will be left behind to pick up the pieces.

“What?” Yaz asks, as though asking the Doctor to clarify might make her reconsider. It hadn’t made _her_ reconsider, all those years before; when Sonya had asked her with an aggressively confrontational manner where she thought she might be going, she’d only told her where to get off and stormed out of the house all the same. But Yaz remembers how she’d been saved; she thinks of the police officer who had plonked herself down on the grass verge with her, and she wants desperately to be that person now for the Doctor. Yet there’s no time to do that; there’s nothing to be gained by her snapping into PC Khan-mode; and besides, this isn’t the same. There’s no emotional intimacy to be gleaned here; there’s no trust to be formed with so many humans – both strange and familiar – staring at them both with every ounce of their attention. She wants, desperately, to save the Doctor in the way she herself had been saved, and yet she doesn’t know how, and she feels helplessness starting to well up in her chest alongside her anxiety.

“The TARDIS will take you back to Earth. All of you. You can settle in the twenty-first century.” The Doctor’s voice is still calm and flat, but Yaz can see the panic and uncertainty in her eyes as she looks between them all, her gaze refusing to alight on any of them for longer than a few seconds. This is a woman whose heart has made up its mind but whose head is having second thoughts; a woman who feels resigned to her death due to the thought of all the greatness that will surely come after. Yaz had seen the reflection of a woman – well, a girl – with the same expression on the morning she had planned to do meet her own death, as she’d looked in the mirror with quiet acceptance before leaving the house. Her eyes had borne the same wide, desolate look; weary of a battle that no-one else could or would see.

“You’re not serious.” Ravio’s words are thick with incredulity; the same disbelief that clouds the air of this unfamiliar TARDIS has imbued them with gravitas.

“Deadly.”

“What about you?” Ryan asks in a small voice, looking over at the Doctor, and Yaz realises then that his hands are shaking. It’s not only her who has been touched by death, although that which has torn through Ryan’s short life had not been greeted like an old friend, or even an expected one. The deaths that had befallen his family had been violent and sharp, much like the Doctor’s is about to be, and not welcomed; not faced up to with failing courage and a smile that doesn’t reach the eyes. “If you detonate that thing, you’ll die too.”

The look of absolute surrender to her fate on the Doctor’s face takes Yaz’s breath away.

“That’s the way it has to be,” the Doctor says softly. “And I would do that in a heartbeat for this universe. For you, my fam.”

The way the final words are delivered, the echo of what she’d said earlier when they’d found her prone and vulnerable in the Citadel, makes Yaz’s heart hurt. The words are intended to bear weight; intended to have the kind of gravitas that will make them think twice about questioning her, and Yaz knows that their use is deliberate. How can they argue against that? How can they tell the Doctor that their lives are trivial and unimportant when compared to those of the universe, when she’s ready to die for their futures? For all of their futures? How can they belittle that kind of sacrifice, or counter it, without sounding pathetically ungrateful?

The words stir a maelstrom of emotion into being in Yaz’s chest. She remembers a similar stream of thought; a similar line of reasoning, three years prior, as she’d written a note and left it carefully underneath her pillow. She’d been doing that for her loved ones too; making the painful, agonising decision to face death and all its mysteries for the sake of removing a burden from her family. It had been _her_ , she’d been convinced of that; _she_ had been a weight bearing down on them, stifling their happiness. She’d been wrong, but she still remembers the absolute certainty that what she had been about to do had been born of altruism.

“We’re not letting you go,” she says boldly, finally finding her voice as the Doctor makes to stride from the console room, and she steps forward, catching hold of the Doctor’s sleeve and clinging to it tightly as a small child would. “You’re not doing this.”

“Get off me, Yaz,” the Doctor pleads, her voice firm and stern, and she pulls Yaz’s hand away from her arm. When she speaks again, her voice is softer, and somehow that’s worse: “Please.”

Yaz falls back, stung. She wants to help; wants to surge forward again and wrap the Doctor in an embrace and refuse to let go or be cast aside. She wants to hold onto her until this notion of death has passed, selfish though she knows that to be; she understands why her friend feels she must do this, and yet it doesn’t lessen the pain that she knows is to come after the Doctor is gone; doesn’t lessen the agony of parting. She doesn’t want to lose the Doctor; doesn’t want her to have to face death trembling and alone. Part of her aches to go with her friend; the other part of her reasons that she’s needed, and that the Doctor is doing this for her; to give up her own life alongside the Time Lady seems both fitting and perversely ungrateful, and it takes a herculean effort to remain where she stands.

“Yaz, come on,” Ryan says from somewhere behind her, and numbly she lets him take her hand and drag her back a few steps. He gives her hand a reassuring squeeze, and they watch the pain in the Doctor’s gaze as she casts one final look at them, from Yaz to Ryan to Graham, to the humans they’ve picked up along the way, and then back to the fam. There’s so much pain in her gaze that Yaz wants to pull her into a final, bolstering embrace, but she knows that if she takes hold of the Doctor then she’ll never let go.

“Live great lives,” the Doctor whispers.

And with that, she’s gone.


End file.
